The Plasma Monster Page 4

  Neither Rhodan nor Deringhouse contradicted him.

  "Well, by that token our logicians and the robot brain on Venus are right again," said the general. "It looks as if we must have been generous enough to leave our calling card in the Blue System when we made our unexpected visit there."

  Rhodan had his own view of the matter. "You mean they more or less slipped it out of our pockets. Maybe we can thank that Akon woman, Auris, for the fact that they now know in the core of the galaxy where we came from, Gentlemen, it's my guess that our traitor in the case was the computer memory on board the Fantasy before it was destroyed. Wouldn't you say so?"

  The other two men shook their heads and took a deep breath. They failed to understand how the Akon woman, Auris, had been able to obtain the Earth's galactic coordinates from the positronicon of the test ship Fantasy. It was no use trying to figure such things because it only served to pile unanswerable questions on top of more questions. The technological superiority of the Akons was too overwhelming.

  Rhodan glanced at the big positronicon of the Drusus. "When do we make our jump?"

  "In about eight minutes, sir. By that time we will have left the Sol System's gravitational field."

  Rhodan thanked the operator and turned back to Bell and the general. "For the present all we can do is wait. No use going to our cabins at this stage, so let's take our seats."

  Then the metallic voice of the computer came over the speakers as it began the countdown. The three men took seats behind the two pilot positions.

  Deringhouse had looked briefly but penetratingly at his chief when they sat down. Now he leaned closer to him. "Sir, do you think this is really something sweat about?"

  "Yes!" admitted Rhodan without hesitation. "This is a real bed of nails, my friend. The Akon ship's direct approach has every earmark of some kind of definite plan. And their radio silence only strengthens that suspicion. But, playing with riddles isn't getting us anywhere. We have to intercept the little ship and force the Akons to lay their cards on the table."

  Bell had overheard this conversation. "Seems a little weird to me the Akons are making this visit in just one ship—and just a 100-meter shell at that. Or do you think maybe there are more of them in our territory that we haven't spotted yet?"

  "Anything is possible. I don't exclude the possibility that they can be camouflaging themselves with an anti-tracking screen that we'd be powerless to detect."

  "Then we'd better get set for some surprises around here!" growled Bell.

  The Drusus was close to making its 650 light-year transition into the Orion sector. The positronic computer counted out the last minute before the jump. Sirens were heard throughout the giant battleship, warning all crewmembers to strap themselves in.

  The zero count arrived, followed by the transition. Where the vast sphere had been an instant before, the dark void was empty.

  3/ VOYAGE OF THE RETSE-U

  The tall men with their satin-brown complexions stood before their spaceship engaged in conversation; they laughed and joked just as though they were Earthmen and not a special task force of the Blue System that was always busy with dangerous assignments. Their deeply tanned skin coloration was a natural effect of the giant blue star above them, which was 180 times as large as Sol. Its powerful ultraviolet radiations had endowed them with this accentuated feature of appearance.

  By Terran standards they were on the average a head taller than normal and they resembled the inhabitants of the Arkon worlds more than they did those of Earth. However, aside from their physical stature they also differed from the Arkonides due to their lack of reddish eyes. One would look among them in vain to find white hair, which instead was a coppery red in hue. Or at least the latter color predominated.

  A thinning cloud layer allowed the light of the blue sun of Akon to break through bringing the oppressive heat of a summer day to the planet Sphynx. But the small group of Akon commandos did not appear to notice it. These were all young men who stood there conversing easily, apparently unconcerned about the task which lay ahead of them. They were waiting for Vu Pooh, the commander of their 100-meter spherical vessel, the Retse-U.

  The flat-poled starship was #38 in the fleet of the Energy Command, which comprised 52 ships of this class. But that was all. In the Blue System there was no ship 53.

  In fact for many thousands of years now there had been nothing that humans or Arkonides would have regarded as spaceships, other than a small force of such vessels as these. The Akons had long since dispensed with this crude form of transportation. They had converted the moon of Sphynx into a tremendous transmitter station and had installed smaller transmitter-receiver stations on almost all of their colonial worlds, which served to transport all passenger and freight traffic through time and space.

  A trip from one planet to another was nothing much more than a short walk. All any Akon had to do was step through the station's energy gate and with one step he would leave his own world to arrive through a receiver gate on the destination planet with the next.

  The small fleet of 100-meter ships was reserved for special cases. Officially the task force carried the name of Energy Command. However small and insignificant their outward appearance, mighty forces slumbered within these ships. In more than 8000 years of Akon reckoning, not one ship in the command had ever been lost. And this was why the crewmembers did not consider their missions to be dangerous. For them such assignments only represented a trip through the galaxy by this primitive means, perhaps accompanied by adventures which were in themselves always completely harmless.

  Their flights were for the purpose of maintaining the security of the Blue System. And now a portion of the Retse-U's crew was waiting for their ship commander in order to sally forth once more on a mission that would serve to guarantee the security of their stellar domain.

  A dark-haired Akon named Pan-Thel was the first one to see the commander, Vu Pooh, as he came across the small spaceport. He drew this to the attention of his companions and the laughter was suddenly silenced. All of them looked at Vu Pooh expectantly. The latter was bareheaded, a flame-haired giant of a man who gestured to them even from a distance.

  "Here we go—nothing again!" commented a slender Akon named Mna E-Ig. He sounded disappointed. "And here I was hoping that we'd finally have an exciting assignment."

  Gim Sarem, who was second in command, looked at him questioningly. "Are you thinking, Mna, of those obnoxious little white-skinned aliens?"

  "Who else?" interjected Ol Pan-Thel. "I've seen them and I didn't find them so obnoxious or repulsive. A person could easily accustom himself to the sight of their pale complexions. When I recall that tall man with the grey eyes I have to admit he somehow made an impression on me. And in the end analysis, didn't they surprise us when they were able to disappear when we thought we had them pinned down?"

  Mna E-Ig seemed to chuckle soundlessly as he turned to Ol Pan-Thel. "Then perhaps our mission isn't going to be quite so dull, after all, Ol!"

  "Nonsense!" contradicted Gim Sarem. "Ol just has a weakness for anything alien. Those ugly white-skins were merely lucky, that's all. I have it from reliable sources that we simply underestimated the quality of their propulsion system. Everything else about their ship is said to be of little value." He happened to note Ol Pan-Thel's derisive smile. "But of course you don't believe that, Ol! It's typical of you. Sometimes you can become very aggravating on this subject. So what can you object to in what I'm saying?"

  "'The fact you keep thinking of those aliens as being obnoxious and loathsome, Gim. Do we really know them? Are we the only ones in the galaxy?"

  "So that's it!" snapped the second officer of the Retse-U. "It goes against your grain but perhaps you will not deny the way they behaved themselves when they came here? Did they meet us with any modicum of discretion or restraint as would be proper for strangers? We made it plain enough to them that we didn't want to have anything to do with them but still they obtruded upon us in the most annoying manner
possible! Would you, care to contradict that point, Ol Pan-Thel?"

  "I remember a saying of our greatest philosopher, Untk," replied Pan-Thel, still calm and collected although meanwhile the commander Vu Pooh had joined them and was listening to him. "Untk once said..."

  "Spare us your antiquated philosophers!" Gim Sarem exclaimed, but he suddenly became silent when Vu Pooh joined the discussion.

  "Ol, what saying was that?" he asked.

  "It's a short axiom that Untk once stated: Nothing happens without cause or reason."

  A few men laughed and loudest of all was Gim Sarem. But Vu Pooh did not laugh.

  "Nor will you find that our mission was ordered without cause or reason, Pan-Thel. The Ruling Council of Akon has decided that Mal-Se is to be employed here. Now let's get on board. That will be more practical than to stand out here philosophizing."

  It was an order. The debate was not brought up again. Shortly thereafter, one additional container was loaded into the hold. Stamped on it were the Akon letters: Mal-Se.

  Then came the order for the Retse-U to take off.

  Like an arrow shot from a bow the flat-poled sphere hurtled upward through the opening in the clouds. It disappeared beyond the sky and entered upon its mysterious mission.

  • • •

  Gently and without any shock effects the Retse-U emerged once more into the normal universe. The glowing red eye of Betelgeuse stared at them balefully in the empty void.

  The only crewmembers present in the small control room were Vu Pooh and Gim Sarem. Unimpressed by the monster star before them, they sat idly in their flight seats and did not even cast a monitoring glance at their simplified instrument panels.

  A few minutes passed in silence until Vu Poch suddenly leaned forward and examined a small sphere that seemed to float inside a metallic housing. Two clearly glowing blips of light could be seen on the surface of the ball. Vu Pooh nodded his satisfaction and leaned back again in his seat.

  "They've discovered us, Sarem."

  "Good!" replied the other. And with that the matter was taken care of for both of them.

  The Retse-U appeared to race toward the planetary system of Betelgeuse without intelligent guidance. The two Akons gazed with disinterest at the scene on

  their viewscreen, which would have been a strange and wonderful sight in the eyes of humans. The viewing instrument was aimed at the ship's destination. It was capable of revealing the farthermost planets of the giant system.

  Time passed. At undiminished high speed the Retse-U continued to race toward its goal. Suddenly Gim Sarem stirred himself. He pointed to the viewscreen where a pate disc-like object had become visible, its diameter was still very small.

  Vu Pooh hardly gave it the benefit of his glance. "That must be the observation station that we're automatically tracking, Gim." The chief officer of Energy Command ship Retse-U did not consider it worth the effort to say any more about it. Why should he? This mission was no more or less routine than any of their other assignments.

  The small ship crossed the orbit of the outermost planet, which was a frozen gas world, and proceeded onward to within 30,000 km of the next celestial sphere of the system. The fact that it traversed the outer layers of the planet's turbulent air masses was not noticeable within the ship itself. Seconds later the giant orb lay far behind them.

  Suddenly an instrument rose up from the flight console's flat surface and came to a stop at eye level before the two Akons.

  "Look there!" said Gim Sarem in some surprise. "Three ships of the white-skins!"

  Both men stirred themselves to a state of new alertness. Their gaze held steadily on the instrument while they read the indications suspiciously.

  "Strange," murmured Vu Pooh. "They're paying no attention to us. Three ships, all hanging motionlessly in one location."

  Nor did the situation change.

  The Akons could not guess that the patrol cruiser Nile had received explicit orders to disregard the unknown spaceship and to remain alongside the medi-ship and the contaminated cylindrical ship of the Springers. But the Akons' interest in the three vessels soon subsided. They were confident of the speed and combat strength of the Retse-U.

  The flattened spacesphere raced past Betelgeuse at a vast distance and yet the monster sun hurled its protuberances at them 100 million km into space. It was a titanic molten furnace of nuclear forces undergoing a continuous conversion. But the Akons did not even favor the spectacle with a single glance.

  "They're hailing us," remarked Vu Pooh succinctly.

  The built-in transmitter came to life and they were aware of Reginald Bell's request for identification. The challenge came three times and three times the translator converted the repeated text of it into their own language. Vu Pooh and Gim Sarem sat there like silent gods. This insignificant aggravation on the part of

  the white-skins failed to move them.

  "Their radio traffic has suddenly increased..."

  Vu Pooh merely commented on this to relieve the monotony of their assignment. He didn't expect Gim Sarem to answer him, nor did he. The translator remained silent. It was a clear indication that the radio messages did not concern them. They had no interest in the contents of the alien communications.

  The Retse-U had traversed three more planetary orbits when three instruments rose up from the panel simultaneously. Also the overall picture on the viewscreen had changed abruptly. Now there was visible a spaceship of titanic proportions. Each of the eye-level instruments before the Akons reported various details concerning the mighty ship: its distance, its acceleration capability—and also the fact that it was following them.

  Vu Pooh smiled. "If we don't increase our speed they'll overtake us in nine time units," he said, while leisurely leaning forward to the console. With his left hand he touched an adjustment and shoved it forward.

  Although there was no change on the viewscreen the Retse-U's position within the Betelgeuse system was altered abruptly. It disappeared from its location and in an infinitesimal moment reappeared over the seventh planet, which was a methane gas giant.

  Now the viewscreen changed and boiling gas clouds almost seemed to penetrate the control room of the Akon ship. Still under fully automatic flight control, the flat-ended spacer headed for a landing at an incredible speed. Seconds later the air masses around the ship started to glow. Streamers of methane gas could be seen on the screen as they reddened to incandescence.

  Even this spectacle did not merit a glance of interest from either Vu Pooh or Gim Sarem. But now the first order was issued from the control room since the Retse-U had taken off from Sphynx.

  "Command detail—stand by for action!" And Vu Pooh added: "Landing in 1/ 10th time unit!"

  After that, everything was quiet again.

  Down in the ready room there was also an air of calm, Although two groups of Akon technicians had gathered there. In a quiet atmosphere of small talk they waited for the spaceship to land. Thin, close-fitting spacesuits covered their practical service clothing. Their completely transparent helmets appeared to be very fragile. On their backs were protuberances about the size of a cigar box which indicated that special life-support systems had been installed in their suits.

  At the flash of a green light, their conversation stopped. Space helmets dropped into place. The young commandos took up positions in the oblong chamber where about one-third of the space was taken up by large and small pieces of machinery.

  Five Akons took their positions in front of a rectangular switchboard. A second green flash followed the first. At the same time the barely discernible lock hatch opened, which served for loading and unloading the ship. The turbulent masses of methane gas swept into the room and sought to engulf everything in it.

  More than 20 Akons stepped outside but they hardly glanced at their bizarre and deadly surroundings. In the course of their many missions they had encountered enough alien worlds so that this planet with its incessant hurricanes was nothing new to their experience. In sp
ite of the whipping force of the gas masses around them and the tremendous gravitation of this life-hostile environment, the Akons moved about with incredible self-assurance.

  In uninterrupted sequence they were followed by machine components which floated on concentrated antigrav repulsion fields. The Akon team was coordinated like a troupe of professional performers. Every handhold went firmly to the right place and every step of the work was coordinated with the activity of each man in turn. The permafrosted ground was bored into with energy beams to a depth of 20 meters and metal uprights of a corresponding length were placed in the holes.

  At a slight distance from the main team the control group was also busy. Each member was in radio contact with the Retse-U. The ecliptic of the methane planet, orbital velocity, celestial mechanics of the entire solar system with respect to their own sun back home—all these and several hundred other factors, some of them even contra-rotational, had to be taken into consideration so that the end result would agree with all natural conditions.

  When the seventh time period had passed, Gut-Ko, the chief engineer of the team, connected the converter to the almost barn-sized power plant, which was a miniature replica of the giant transmitter back in the Blue System. He used a hand-sized combination test instrument and operated its sensor beams, checking out all the main phases before he felt he was ready to close the power circuits.

  The main work team had already returned to the Retse-U but the control group remained long enough to make the final vernier adjustments. Then Gut-Ko and his men also went inside the ship. When the last of them had come on board, the airlock hatch closed silently. Instead of pumps, force fields pushed out the poisonous methane gas in one operation. It was a process that only took a fraction of a second to accomplish. Once more the green light flashed, signaling the specialist group that the Retse-U was taking off.